Guides for solo builders and teams of two: finding a problem worth solving, building on free plans you can trust, launching without surprises, and getting paid.
Every number checked against these providers' own pricing pages
Five stages, in the order they happen. Read the first guide in each and you'll know more than most people do on launch day.
The one question that tells real pain from polite interest.
2BuildWhat each free tier really allows, and what pauses.
3LaunchCount your launch, upgrade a week early.
4Get paid$1.02 of every $20, and why it adds up fast.
5GrowCash up front, fewer cancellations, lower fees.
If one of these sounds like you, start with the guide we picked for you.
You've built something people use for free. Now you want to charge for it, and need to know which free plans stop being OK.
You built the same thing for three clients. You want to sell it monthly and need to price it so it still pays at 200 customers.
An AI assistant can write the code. You want to know what to check yourself, what it will cost, and whether anyone wants it.
These threads are why the guides exist. Each card links to the original discussion and to the guide that answers it.
of every $20 subscription payment goes to card and billing fees with a typical US processor.
Card fees 100emails a day is a common free email limit. Forty launch-day sign-ups can need twice that.
Launch day 1 weekof inactivity is enough for some free databases to pause your project.
Free plans 0.3%spam complaints is the line Gmail tells senders never to reach. Aim for under 0.1%.
EmailFour common kinds of small software, each at 200 customers paying $20 a month. What a product sends, stores or serves decides its biggest cost.
Email-heavyBiggest lines: card fees, then email tiers.
File-heavyDownloads cost more than storage.
Message-heavyPer-message costs grow with every booking.
QuietWatch for free databases that pause.
Terms, limits and the monthly bill once you charge money.
$0–5$9–20$20/seat PaymentsLower fees and more tax work, or higher fees and none.
~$1.02vs$1.50 PricingCash up front, fewer cancellations and lower fees.
$240vs$200What usually stops a free plan, by category. The full guide names each provider and its first paid step.
| Category | Typical free limit | What breaks first |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting | Generous traffic, but some free plans exclude commercial use or pause when credits run out | Terms, the day you charge money |
| Database | About 500 MB to 1 GB; some projects pause after a week idle | Pausing during a quiet week |
| About 3,000 a month and 100 a day | The daily cap, on launch day | |
| Logins | Free up to tens of thousands of users | Rarely the first limit |
| Payments | No monthly fee, about 2.9% + 30¢ per charge | Nothing breaks, it just grows |
Get paidA practical way to land on a first price: start from what customers already pay, check your floor against real costs, choose a simple plan shape, and set it up so you can change it later without drama.
Get paidCard-upfront trials, no-card trials, free plans and paid pilots, compared on what they cost you, who they attract and how they end. With a way to pick one for your first launch.
LaunchHow to stop shipping fixes straight to paying customers: preview links for every change, a simple branch habit, a rollback you've practised, and how this interacts with usage-based hosting.
BuildMost small products never need a server they manage. This guide covers what serverless functions handle well, where their limits bite, how background and scheduled jobs fit in, and the signs you've outgrown them.
BuildApex or www, which records to add, why email keeps working, how long changes take, and how to get free HTTPS. Everything between buying a domain and seeing your product on it.
GrowThe first three months decide whether a customer stays. The common reasons small products lose people early, how to find out which one is yours, and the fixes that cost an evening rather than a rebuild.
42 terms you'll meet while building and selling a small product.
A small team of builders writing for people who launch software alone or in pairs. Every price is checked against the provider's own page and linked at the end of each guide. More about us.
Every guide shows when it was last checked; the current set was checked in November 2026. We re-check each quarter and whenever a provider announces changes.
Sometimes a small referral fee, if you end up on a paid plan through one of our links. It doesn't change what we write; plenty of our guides tell you to stay on a free plan.
No. It's an illustrative story built from common patterns, with every number based on published 2026 prices. We say so on the page.
What it pays for, what it earns, and the cost that surprised its makers. Plus new guides when they're out.
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